Thinking of Working For The Government?

BostonGal says, “Seeing how many people are on the Millionaire in the Making list due in part to secure state, government, or military pension plans is becoming a bit of a downer for me. Should I try to start a second career as a state or government employee? Just so I can get guaranteed income and heath benefits in retirement?”

Some of her commenters take issue saying that benefits are not guaranteed and changeable with the economic tides especially at the state level. I agree. It’s a risk and it has a lot of pros and cons. Living in DC, I can see that every day. The CNN/Money series has generally profiled federal government employees and if you ask me, a lot of them have been active military and I’m not sure combat pay is a great way to build your wealth up.

Check Office of Personnel Management if you really have questions. OPM is your best resource for general questions or else the HR office of your potential agency.

In terms of benefits as a full-time employee, you get:

FEGLI - Group Life Insurance: But you have to sign up for it when you are hired. No changing your mind later because you can’t sign up. OPM only runs a sign up period every few years, ‘few’ meaning ‘decades’. You can check their site for the open enrollment dates, they are very, very far apart. When you’re young, you don’t think you need it, so you think you’re saving money. Then you turn 40, have two kids and you want insurance and now you have to go get it on your own. Something to think about if you enter a government career at 25.

FERS-Federal Employees Retirement System: A three-part system consisting of

1. Social Security - Yes, they really think they’re going to pay it in 20 years.

2. Basic Benefits/Annuity - Pension benefit, an annuity payment of a portion of your salary.

3. Thrift savings Plan - Retirement investments, which on the whole, are very generic and probably don’t chase a lot of risk for high reward. But it’s a little hard to tell from the available literature. The other thing is that the maximum match is 5% of your salary, for a total of 10%. The other good thing is that you vest in 2 years and they automatically give you 1% even if you don’t save anything.

Health Insurance: Health insurance, for your whole family, dependent children, adopted/fostered children.

I’m sure all that sounds great, but you have to work for the government for 30 years unless you are in one of several categories, all of which have stipulations.

1. Military or Law Enforcement: 25 years of service or Age 50 and 20 years of service.

2. Voluntary Early Retirement: Special retirement packages offered agency by agency, dependent on a matrix of age and length of service, determined at the time the packages are offered which could be few and far between.

3. Part-Time Employees

4. Members of Congress/Congressional Employees

5. Military Reserve Technicians

Frankly, I don’t like the idea of working for 30 years for anybody. At that point, I might as well be a company man for some large corporation or something crazy like that.

The other thing is that BostonGal might not like her pay grade and step. I know she’s in IT but some federal IT jobs in the DC area don’t pay well and frankly, they can truly stink. (I knew a sysadmin who left our company for two weeks and came right back because his FAA IT job wasn’t what it was billed to be.) You’re better off being a contractor if you ask me, but the government does pay for a lot of training, so you might be able to move your grade up a lot faster with an internal promotion, new degree, or an agency change.

At any rate, if you want to work for the government, check out USAJobs.com. It’s OPM’s website for recruiting. It works like Monster.com where you can set up agents and bulletins for new listings. That’s key since there are closing dates on postings which are very important. However, several agencies subcontract out to AVUE, like DOJ, USDA Forest Service, and TSA. (Get used to acronyms, that’s what government life is all about!)

There is much more to consider but these are some basics. Things like COLA, ‘danger pay’, locality pay, etc are more esoteric but can really make a huge difference in your salary comparisons. (For instance DC area pay is 30+% higher than published tables.)